\”I\” before \”E\” except after \”C\” and when sounding for \”A\” as in \”neighbor\” and \”weigh.\” So where does that leave us?

As you may or may not have gathered from previous posts, I am somewhat addicted to BlogThings. I have their listing of new quizzes bookmarked, and I tend to drift on over there whenever I’m in the mood for a little pop psychology or other mindless fun. New this week:

Your Love Type: INTJ

The ScientistIn love, you tend to be very private and withdrawn – even when things are going well.For you, sex is important in a happy relationship. Less important when things aren’t going well.Overall, you are confident, intelligent, and serious about commitment.However, you tend to hold back and not show your emotions.Best matches: ENFP and ENTP

(“Pardon me,” says the reader who also knows a bit about my personal life, “but why did you take the love type test?” It was there and I was bored. Shut up.)

With the exception of the sex bit (which is outside of my experience) and the assertion that I am “confident,” the results seemed pretty accurate. To those unfamiliar with the four-letter designations used in the results, the quiz is based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the most popular test of its kind historically and today.

The questions and format of this particular quiz seemed familiar; I had taken a BlogThings quiz based on the MBTI on a previous occasion. After a brief search, I found that other quiz and re-took it. The same person assembled both of the quizzes, I took them within a few minutes of each other, and…

You Are An ISTJ

The Duty FulfillerYou are responsible, reliable, and hardworking – you get the job done.You prefer productive hobbies, like woodworking or knittings.Quiet and serious, you are well prepared for whatever life hands you.Conservative and down-to-earth, you hardly ever do anything crazy.

…I got a different result, which was also fairly accurate, if only by dint of being superficial. But why the difference? What exactly do sense and intuition mean to these people, anyway? I googled INTJ and ISTJ and compared notes.

INTJ:

pragmatic

perfectionist

imaginative

reliable

knowledgeable

self-confident

private

impassive

“idea people”

ISTJ:

dutiful

punctual

taciturn

“grim determination”

establishmentarian

strong sense of propriety

Working backwards from these lists of traits, I could conclude that I am ISTJ in those hours between midnight and my first cup of coffee, INTJ the rest of the time. Yet the MBTI is supposed to classify one’s psychological makeup in stark, rigid terms. Clearly, I needed a bigger sample.

A little more googling turned up at least a dozen sites offering free online versions of the MBTI (told you the thing was popular), most of which I took. The first two pasted me neatly within the INTJ category– so neatly that I thought of stopping there. Fortunately for the cause of science, I kept going, and the next such test declared that I was, not INTJ nor ISTJ, but ISTP. So not only had I confounded the Intuitive/Sensing dichotomy, but the Judging/Perceiving one as well.

All the tests I had taken thusfar consisted of a series of questions with two answers each, and displayed the results in the cut-and-dried four-letter format which I had come to think of as the standard. Standard or not, I thought this test displayed the results in a much more satisfying way, showing how many points went to each trait and indicating evenly split scores with an X (I came out IXTJ). This other test has a similar, even more detailed way of displaying the results, and the questions are presented as statements with which the test taker may agree or disagree on a five-point scale. Taking the results of these tests and others as an aggregate, I’ve found that I am

100% Introverted/0% Extraverted

50% iNtuitive/50% Sensing

75% Thinking/25% Feeling

50% Judging/50% Perceiving.

Depending on the test, I could be classified INTJ just as easily as INTP, ISTP or ISTJ.

Conclusions:

I’m very introverted and I tend to operate on ideas more than emotions. Anybody could have told you that.

Sometimes I obtain information/draw conclusions via conscious processes, and sometimes things just click. Call it inconsistancy or flexibility; it works for me even if it doesn’t work for Jung.

When you’re a world-famous psychologist, you can spell “extrovert” any way you want.

MBTI provides a fun way to spend an afternoon and an interesting angle on your self-image, but you probably shouldn’t use it to plot your career path or choose your spouse.